Does International Election Observation Deter and Detect Fraud? Evidence from Russia

It is widely taken for granted that international election observation deters and detects election fraud, but little evidence exists that supports this conventional wisdom. This article employs a unique dataset on the 2011 and 2012 election observation missions by the osce to the legislative and presidential elections in russia, to assess the claim that international election observation deters and detects fraud. The findings suggest that observers may have deterred fraud to some degree during the observation of counting procedures but less so, if at all, during the observation of voting procedures. , and that observers probably did not detect fraud to any significant degree during both voting and counting observations.